Sara Goddard

Neil Irwin: “The September jobs numbers are easily the worst of 2015 so far. They offer an unpleasant combination of a bad overall headline, bad details and bad timing, amid a volatile and unsettling time in global markets.”

“The weak numbers offer some vindication for those Federal Reserve officials who preferred to hold off on interest rate increases last month to ensure the economy was on sound footing before tightening the money supply. They also give reason to worry that those wild market swings in August were less random fluctuations and more an indication that something deeper is wrong with the global economy — not so much that the stock market drop in August caused weak September jobs numbers, but that there is an underlying economic fragility causing both.”

“The question now is whether it means anything — whether the United States economic expansion, which seemed set to roar into 2015, is slowing in some meaningful way. We don’t know that yet, and it would be a mistake to leap to that conclusion. But that possibility became quite a bit more plausible after the September numbers popped onto economists’ computer screens.”

“If that 310 million number is correct, it means that the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency was an inflection point: It marked the first time that the number of firearms in circulation surpassed the total U.S. population.”

“Data on gun manufacturing from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives now goes through 2013. If we were to update the CRS numbers with the most recent data, we’d get a chart that looks something like this:”

“Regardless of the actual number of civilian firearms in circulation, there’s no ambiguity around one crucial fact: U.S. gun manufacturers have drastically increased their output during the Obama years. In 2009, according to the ATF, gunmakers produced 5.6 million guns. By 2013 their annual production had just about doubled, up to 10.9 million guns that year.”

Gallup: “Americans who are knowledgeable about Congress — based on a five-question quiz — have more negative views of the Republicans and Democrats in Congress compared with those who are less knowledgeable.”

“The fundamental finding is that Americans who know the most about how Congress operates are not only the most negative about Congress in general, but also about the Republicans and Democrats in Congress specifically. This reinforces the general conclusion that criticisms of Congress — and the partisan leaders in Congress — are based on a realistic assessment of what these entities are doing rather than a lack of awareness of or interest in what they are doing.”

Quartz: “Next time you’re pondering the odds that you and your main squeeze will stay together forever, don’t just rely on the opinion of friends. Look at your credit scores.”

“A new working paper published by the US Federal Reserve Board finds that the higher your credit score, the higher your chances of a lasting relationship.”

“A trio of economists parsed data from the Fed’s consumer credit panel to identify the credit scores of couples in committed relationships. People tend to form committed relationships with people whose credit scores are in the same range, the study found. And couples with high credit scores tend to stay together longer.”

“The link between credit scores and relationship longevity probably has to do with creditworthiness being a proxy for ‘an individual’s general trustworthiness and commitment to non-debt obligations,’ the study notes. Those characteristics affect all sorts of things involved in sharing a household—who takes out the trash, for example, and who’s more likely to forget a birthday or anniversary.”

“The below chart … shows that congressional mentions of mass shootings in the context of gun control and mental health issues peaked during the debate after the late-2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., when the White House unsuccessfully pushed for increased background checks for gun purchases.”

“There was less chatter about these issues after the next major mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, and even less after the massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., earlier this year.”

The Hill: “Premiums on ObamaCare plans in 14 major cities are set to increase by an average of 4.4 percent in 2016, according to a new analysis.”

“The analysis from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation looks at 14 cities where complete data on rates from all insurers on ObamaCare’s marketplaces is available, and will be updated as more states release data.”

“While the average increase is relatively modest, some cities are seeing much larger spikes. It is also clear that premiums are increasing more than they did last year, when premiums in these 14 cities on average actually fell by 1.3 percent.”

Gallup: “Half of Americans, on average, so far this year say they are feeling better about their financial situation. This may not seem like a highly positive state of affairs, but it marks a modest improvement from two years ago, when an average of 43% said they were feeling better about their finances.”

“These questions reflect not just the reality of how much money people have, but also how they think about their financial situation. Even though Americans are slightly more positive than they were two years ago, they are clearly not greatly optimistic about their financial situation, with just about half saying they are feeling better about it. And while Americans like to feel they are monitoring their spending closely and attempting to control how much they spend, these attitudes have not changed dramatically since 2013.”

Saul Cornell and Eric Ruben in The Atlantic: “Gun-rights advocates have waged a relentless battle to gut what remains of America’s lax and inadequate gun regulations, [but] what the advocates do not acknowledge—and some courts seem not to understand—is that their arguments are grounded in precedent unique to the violent world of the slaveholding South.”

“Public-carry advocates like to cite historical court opinions to support their constitutional vision, but those opinions are, to put it mildly, highly problematic. The supportive precedent they rely on comes from the antebellum South and represented less a national consensus than a regional exception rooted in the unique culture of slavery and honor. By focusing only on sympathetic precedent, and ignoring the national picture, gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined …In the South, violence … was an approved way to avenge perceived insults to manhood and personal status.”

“Throughout most of the country and over most of its history, the Second Amendment has not determined the outcome of this debate nor stood in the way of popular public-carry regulations. Then, as now, such regulations were evaluated based on the impact they would have on crime and public safety.”

Margot Sanger-Katz: “Over the last 20 years, sales of full-calorie soda in the United States have plummeted by more than 25 percent. Soda consumption, which rocketed from the 1960s through 1990s, is now experiencing a serious and sustained decline.”

“The drop in soda consumption represents the single largest change in the American diet in the last decade and is responsible for a substantial reduction in the number of daily calories consumed by the average American child. From 2004 to 2012, children consumed 79 fewer sugar-sweetened beverage calories a day, according to a large government survey, representing a 4 percent cut in calories over all. As total calorie intake has declined, obesity rates among school-age children appear to have leveled off.”

“In explaining the disdain for sodas … industry executives have noted that consumers these days seem more interested in healthier or natural products. They are also frank about other attitude changes that are a threat to their businesses.”

“The changing patterns of soda drinking appear to come thanks, in part, to a loud campaign to eradicate sodas. School cafeterias and vending machines no longer contain regular sodas. Many workplaces and government offices have similarly prohibited their sale.”

Paul Krugman asks why every Republican candidate is obsessed with cutting taxes for the wealthy.

“True, you can find self-proclaimed economic experts claiming to find overall evidence that low tax rates spur economic growth, but such experts invariably turn out to be on the payroll of right-wing pressure groups … Independent studies of the correlation between tax rates and economic growth, for example by the Congressional Research Service, consistently find no relationship at all.”

“Still, tax cuts are politically popular, right? Actually, no, at least when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy. According to Gallup, only 13 percent of Americans believe that upper-income individuals pay too much in taxes, while 61 percent believe that they pay too little. Even among self-identified Republicans, those who say that the rich should pay more outnumber those who say they should pay less by two to one.”

“It’s straightforward and quite stark: Republicans support big tax cuts for the wealthy because that’s what wealthy donors want. No doubt most of those donors have managed to convince themselves that what’s good for them is good for America. But at root it’s about rich people supporting politicians who will make them richer. Everything else is just rationalization.”

Vox: “In December 2012, a gunman walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children, six adults, and himself. Since then, there have been at least 986 mass shootings, with shooters killing at least 1,234 people and wounding 3,565 more.”

“The counts come from the Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowdsourced database that tracks shootings since 2013 in which four or more people were shot.”

“But why does the US have so many more gun homicides than other advanced countries? One possible explanation: Americans are much more likely to own guns than most of the world — the US makes up about 4.4 percent of the global population, but owns 42 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns. And the empirical research shows places with more guns have more homicides.”

The Hill: “Dozens of economists and health experts from both sides of the aisle are coming to the defense of ObamaCare’s embattled Cadillac tax.”

“The 101 experts argue, in a letter distributed by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that the tax on high-cost health plans will slow the rise of healthcare costs, because employers don’t have enough incentive now to limit the sort of plans they offer.”

“The letter comes after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton endorsed scrapping the Cadillac tax, a position that is popular among organized labor. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), another Democratic candidate, also opposes the tax, and Republicans have long sought to repeal it.”

Stephen Wolf in Daily Kos: “In PPP’s latest survey, this time in North Carolina, 72 percent said that a Muslim should never ever be allowed to be president, echoing Carson’s statements. An identical 72 percent also agree with a recent Donald Trump claim that President Obama is waging a war on Christianity. Finally, a 40 percent said the practice of Islam should be outright illegal, an even greater proportion that the 30 percent of Iowa Republicans who told PPP the same thing a week ago.”

“It’s ironic that the party loves to claim strict fealty to the Constitution is more than eager to ignore some of our founding document’s most fundamental protections—like the freedom of religion.”

Lawrence Downes in the New York Times: “Do these people know what it means to outlaw Muslim worship? Do they teach history in the North Carolina schools? Do they know what would happen if we closed mosques, arrested worshipers and prayer leaders, imposed religious tests for public office? Are these overwrought questions, or do the ugly answers in this poll portend something seriously wrong: an outbreak of a deadly fever this country has seen many times before?”

Philip Bump: “Every time a candidate says something that sounds too good to be true, The Post’s Glenn Kessler and team try to determine whether it is. By now, The Post’s fact-checking team has amassed more than 100 ratings of statements from the 2016 candidates, allowing us, at last, to do a bit of meta-analysis

The Post’s Glenn Kessler and his colleague Michelle Ye Hee Lee “issue a certain number of ‘pinocchios’ to candidate statements, ranging from zero to four. Zero pinocchios means that the statement was true. Four? Quite the opposite.”

“We took all of the fact checks that the Post has done for all of the 2016 candidates and compared them.”

“Lindsey Graham — fact-checked once and found wanting — has the worst average. Several candidates have two-pinocchio averages, which is as good as it gets.”